She gave me a little curtsy in her red kimono, and I was, as always, a little taken aback, flustered like a schoolboy. Richie Colgan, arguably the top newspaper columnist in the city, was chunky, his face perpetually hidden behind five o’clock shadow, his ebony skin splotched with too many late nights and caffeine and antiseptic air. But Sherilynn—with her toffee skin and milky gray eyes, the sculpted muscle tone of her slim limbs and the sweet musical lilt of her voice, a remnant of the sandy Jamaican sunsets she’d seen every day until she was ten years old—was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever encountered.

She kissed my cheek and I could smell a lilac fragrance on her skin.

“So,” she said, “make it quick.”

“Gosh,” I said, “am I hungry. You guys have anything in the fridge?”

As I reached for the refrigerator, Richie hit me like a snowplow and carried me down the hall into the dining room.

“What?” I said.

“Just tell me it’s important.” His hand was an inch from my face. “Just tell me, Patrick.”

“Well…”

I told him about my night, about Grief Release and Manny and his Pods, about the encounter with Officer Largeant and Angie’s B and E of the corporate offices.

“And you say you saw Messengers out front?” he said.

“Yeah. At least six of them.”

“Hmm.”

“Rich?” I said.

“Give me the diskettes.”

“What?”

“That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

“I—”

“You’re a computer illiterate. Angie, too.”

“I’m sorry. Is that bad?”

He held out his hand. “The discs.”

“If you could just—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He snapped the diskettes from my hand, tapped them against his knee for a moment. “So, I’m doing you another favor?”

“Well, sorta, yeah,” I said. I shifted my feet, looked up at the ceiling.

“Oh, please, Patrick, try the aw-shucks-bawse routine on someone who gives a shit.” He tapped my chest with the diskettes. “I help you, I want what’s on these.”

“How do you mean?”

He shook his head, smiled. “Now, see, you think I’m playing, don’t you?”

“No, Rich, I—”

“Just ’cause we went to college together, all that shit, you think I’m just going to say, ‘Patrick’s in trouble. Lawsy, I’ll do whatever I can.’”

“Rich, I…”

He stepped up close to me, hissed. “You know the last time I had a good old romantic, I’m-gonna-have-sex-with-my-wife-and-take-my-time sorta night?”

I stepped back. “No.”

“Well, I don’t either,” he said loudly. He closed his eyes, tightened the belt on his robe. “I don’t either,” he repeated in his hissed whisper.

“So, I’m leaving,” I said.

He stepped in front of me. “Not until we get this straight.”

“Okay.”

“I find something on these diskettes I can use, I’m using it.”

“Right,” I said. “As always. As soon as—”